EDIT: I just realised I mixed up the release dates of Vice City and San Andreas- Vice City came out in 2002. Actually it's crazy they made Vice City in just a year looking at how long GTA VI has taken
I'm currently playing through the game and I love how dated everything feels. Not in terms of gameplay, as it's largely the same as GTA V, but in terms of the technology, politics and culture it depicts. Niko owns an old Nokia-style cellphone, he goes to an Internet cafe to read emails from his mom, there's radio ads for ringtones, MySpace is specifically parodied, the game's internet in general feels like it's out of the mid 2000s, the city is in lockdown because of a terror threat, the war on terror is all over the news, a 24 parody is the biggest show on television, etc etc etc.
I've always felt like the world of GTA IV was already a museum piece by the time GTA V came out. There's only 5 years between the two but by 2013 I feel like we had already shifted into a new era that we're still living in. Obviously, many aspects of GTA V feel dated now but I feel like the world it depicts is still largely recognisable as our own
Some things stay evergreen though
I never actually played around with the internet cafes in IV this is great.
There's a huge amount of websites to browse in both 4 and 5. I never really noticed or cared when I was younger but there are three news websites you can visit, reporting on the same news stories from conservative, centrist and liberal angles, respectively. I don't always like the writing in GTA but it's a pretty good bit.
Here's the conservative and liberal articles about the Jingoism Act
Also in 5 you can go to the MySpace parody's website to find that it has been sold and shut down, which just goes to show how quickly the moment of time depicted in 4 passed. (In 5 the Facebook equivalent is the main form of social media which itself has become pretty dated by now.)
I assume there are going to be Reddit, Discord and TikTok parodies in GTA 6. A Twitter parody has existed since The Ballad of Gay Tony but it's never played a huge part
"sodomy has been outlawed completely except in rare cases" should not have got me like it did
bawsaq lol
Sometimes it's really obvious Rockstar is originally from Scotland. Same thing with the "fudge packed" donuts